Noisy Animation

Started by dorianvan, March 02, 2017, 11:14:39 PM

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dorianvan

Thanks Hannes, good advice.

I rendered overnight on several computers and full size (1920x1080) are taking from 7.5 to 10 hours for one frame. Way too long with my deadline. Somehow I've got to speed things up. Detail and AA are .8, 12. and Blending 5 files (each 435MB).
-Dorian

Dune

That is awfully long. I think that's the main problem with all animations, the flickering and thus high values needed. Would some sort of blur (motion in TG) or post do any good to smooth things out? Perhaps a soft filter helps?

dorianvan

Well the first thing I'm doing is losing the clouds I like, not worth the extra time when you don't have it. Besides, I could blend in a still with clouds in post (thanks Ulco). Next, I'm lowering the AA to 10, not as good as 12, but might be tolerable. Plus, lowering the Ray detail multiplier from .5 to default .25. Does blending 4 files instead of 5 reduce the rendering time/quality do you think?
-Dorian

Dune

The ray detail multiplier doesn't have any effect afaik, as there's no water involved. V3 clouds take a long time, so I would indeed go for simple v2 clouds or postclouds. I really can't say much about animation, not my forte at all. I would say a soft filter would do some more blending, and as all is moving, you don't need it crisp anyway.

cyphyr

I don't think I've ever done an animation with the detail level up as high as 0.8.  The Audi Seasons one was done at 0.5 with some of the AA at 12 and some as low as 3. Also you can render at a higher res/lower quality and down sample to get more crispness if you need.
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dorianvan

Quote from: Dune on March 10, 2017, 11:54:45 AM
The ray detail multiplier doesn't have any effect afaik, as there's no water involved.

Does this mean I should have it set to 0?

@Richard: Thanks for sharing that, I'll try .65 and see if that's enough.
-Dorian

Matt

Ray Detail Multiplier is used for shadows (not just reflections) of any displaceable surfaces including terrain, so don't reduce it too much.

Some bugs in the current version (v4.0.04) might be causing the GI cache files to be much larger than necessary when using Cloud Layer V3 or Easy Cloud. Therefore the number of GI cache files to blend might also impact render times quite significantly. But if you take out the V3/EC clouds and re-generate the cache files you should be able to leave the blend number at 5.

I've been incrementally tackling some of these performance problems with V3/EC clouds and you should see improvements in v4.1, which we want to release in the next few weeks.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Oshyan

I agree with Richard/cyphyr, reconsider whether you need Micropoly Detail at 0.8. Especially for in-motion shots you can often get away with a good deal less, as long as the Animation Check button has set the internal Renderer Subdiv Settings to animation-appropriate values. 0.5 or 0.6 Micropoly Detail is generally fine for animations. Also keep in mind that in Terragen 4 Defer Atmo is enabled by default, meaning that high AA will make atmosphere elements take longer to render. You need to use adaptive AA settings (set 1/16 or 1/64th First Samples, and adjust noise threshold to achieve desired noise levels), and reduce atmo samples (and sometimes cloud quality) to get good render quality *and* time with both objects and atmosphere in the scene. You can often use just 8 atmo samples if AA is high and Defer Atmo is enabled.

Try those adjustments and see what you can get render times down to.

- Oshyan

dorianvan

Great information Matt/Oshyan! Thank you, I will give those settings a try. Animation settings are a balancing act that takes a bit of getting used to. Is there a general rule for where you want the minimum samples to be? Also, I left off Microvertex jittering, but kept detail blending at 1, not sure if that was right, but I am trying to avoid jittering and gain blending.
-Dorian

Oshyan

Indeed, animation render settings are something to themselves and require some learning and experimentation beyond what is necessary for stills. But once you have a good sense of what works well the iteration can get faster for future scenes.

The ideal minimum number of samples will depend on what kind of elements you have in your scene. If you have objects with lots of fine details, for example grass, evergreen trees, or a house with railings as a non-plant example (or fencing, etc.), then you probably don't want to go below 1/16 first samples, and likely need a minimum of 4-6 samples per pixel to get decent results. If you have less "thin"/detailed objects and/or mostly atmosphere, you can potentially have less samples per pixel, maybe as low as 2, but really the best approach is to do lots of tests with your actual scenes.

Microvertex Jittering is not necessarily going to give you visible noise/jittering. I would generally trust what the Check Animation button changes. This includes disabling Detail Jittering but *not* Microvertex Jittering. That being said you probably won't see issues in your scene from not having microvertex jitter enabled, I don't think.

Detail Blending increases render time, so you could try it at 0.5 (again this is what the animation check button sets it to). If you see an increase in popping artifacts then you may need to increase it.

I also forgot to respond about the Ray Detail Multiplier, but the default is 0.25 and you should probably just use that value. Increasing it is most often useful in situations with water or other refractive materials, for rendering of higher detail refracted surfaces.

- Oshyan

dorianvan

GIC's are now 160MB's each (turned off clouds), and rendering the final now. I went to .6 detail, kept AA10, lowered min samples to 6.3, increased PNT from .02 to .03, and lowered Detail blending to .5 (thanks Oshyan for the tips). Fingers crossed, ran out of testing time :)
-Dorian

Dune

Didn't know RDM was used for shadows too. Good to know. Good luck, Dorian!

DocCharly65

The last version (Test16?) looks really great!

Between all the posts I didn't see any hint what kind of project this is - business or private?
Looks as if it could be a part of a documentary :)

dorianvan

Quote from: DocCharly65 on March 13, 2017, 06:44:15 AM
Looks as if it could be a part of a documentary :)

Yes, it is for a documentary. I have a couple of crop renders to do but mostly this is done. The noisiness mostly went away with my last settings.
-Dorian

Hannes

Looks great, Dorian. Congrats!